Left: Community Plunge 2012 volunteers.
Learning to Make a Difference Academic year begins with Community Plunge Donning navy blue T-shirts, more than 260 Centenarians kicked off the academic year on August 27, 2012, by clearing brush and weeds from a vacant Hackettstown lot, harvesting produce for local food pantries and volunteering for some of northwest New Jersey’s most vulnerable populations. It was Community Plunge, an annual rite-of-passage that introduces first year students to Centenary’s longstanding tradition of serving others. The daylong event, featured in The Star-Ledger, sent Centenary volunteers to 18 sites, including the Business Improvement District (BID) in downtown Hackettstown, the Matheny Medical and Educational Center in Peapack and the Antler Ridge Animal Sanctuary in Newton. A requirement for all first year students, Community Plunge is one of the College’s many service initiatives that challenge Centenarians to put ideals into concrete action. Through Midnight Run, a program that delivers food and supplies to New York City’s homeless, “Ethiopia Reads,” an international literacy project brought to the campus by the late Professor Emeritus Robert T. Quade ’96 HA that the Athletic Department continues in his memory, and other volunteer projects, the College community donates more than 21,000 service hours each year. The depth and variety of these efforts spurred the Corporation for
National and Community Service (CNCS) and the U.S. Department of Education to name Centenary to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll in 2012.
Scholarships Help Students Complete Degrees Centenary College and the Women’s Leadership Council of United Way of Northern New Jersey partnered to create a new scholarship designed to assist female, non-traditional students who have graduated from Warren County Community College. Instituted in Fall 2012 with $5,000 from United Way and a $5,000 match from Centenary, the first recipients are Tracy Kosar ’14, a Sociology major with a concentration in Criminal Justice, and Christina Chmielewski ’14, a double major in Accounting and Mathematics who plans to
The literacy project “Ethiopia Reads” was near and dear to the late Professor Emeritus Robert T. Quade ’96 HA. Centenary’s Athletic Department is continuing the service project in his memory.
become a CPA.
Pictured from left: Sarah Brelvi, United Way Women’s Leadership Council Director, Tracy Kosar ’14 and Centenary College President Dr. Barbara-Jayne Lewthwaite. The Centenarian 3